The Salengro Centre is a facility where family social work must be carried out as a priority, coordinating medical-social and socio-educational activities in order to provide families with the means to fulfil their role. This global action, if it is aimed at the whole population, must be particularly oriented towards the socially or culturally less favoured.
Each year a booklet presenting the activities is produced.
The department decides to set up 1000 “temporary buildings” in the North called “Mille Clubs de Jeunes”, a building is proposed to the town of Armentières. The municipality implanted it in the Salengro district, it will be called “Local Club de Jeunes Salengro”.
The “One Thousand Clubs” is a premises made available to all and everyone in direct management. It is a place of life, entertainment, leisure, social events are organized there. Volunteers bring this place to life. In view of this success, the municipality decided to build a “hard” building and to create a social centre with a well-defined project.
In February 1989 the first stone of the Social Centre was laid. In December of the same year, the Social Centre was inaugurated.
In February 1990 an association was created under the name of “Centre Social Salengro”. This place is a municipal building with an associative management and staff that depends on private law.
The association is managed by a Board of Directors composed of 27 members:
The Board of Directors appoints 10 people to make up a Bureau headed by a President.
In 1996, following incidents, the social centre was closed for 9 months. The Board of Directors resigned as well as its Director. The municipality wishes to continue its action in the neighbourhood and entrusts the mission to a new Board of Directors.
In 1997, a gradual reopening was carried out with the presence of a new director, an educator, a facilitator and a secretary.
The social services resumed and the activities started again.
The municipality entrusts the Social Centre with the mission of creating a “Youth Resource Space” in another district of the city “Les Près du Hem”. This was taken over by the municipal services in 2008.
The Board of Directors sets up various committees (Health, Education-Family, Integration, Culture-Events). These commissions, made up of inhabitants, technicians from the Social Centre and various partners, allow the inhabitants to develop tools for initiative, elaborated in more or less close collaboration with all the actors of the structure.
To date, the Salengro Social Centre is attached to its human values “placing the person at the heart of the overall system” as a privileged player in the
“local social development”.
The social centre has renewed its project, the Caisse d’Allocations Familiales (Family Allowances Fund) has given its approval for a period of 5 years.
The foundations of the social project are based on the following commitments:
A hierarchical and internal organization is put in place: there is a political and technical steering which are articulated and complement each other in order to make the social centre project come alive.
Political steering is ensured by the Board of Directors represented by its President (the decision-making and executive body of the social centre).
The technical steering is articulated as follows: a global animation pole with a director who ensures the complete management of the centre and its various poles which are themselves managed by a manager. A Culture centre, a Health-Family centre, a Prevention and Integration centre and a Popular Education centre.
These centres are created in order to work transversally at the level of the structure.
The social centre has a global project approved for a period of 4 years by the Caisse d’Allocations Familiales. Within the centre, activity centres have been created with managers who are responsible for the activities of the animators. Each year projects on specific actions are carried out. The projects are carried out either within a centre or across the board.
In order to be able to function and fulfill its missions, the social centre has a financial partnership with the following institutions: